Angel of Death Read online

  Even now, I struggle to keep this accidental abomination from claiming more lives. I sit beside you, Jacob. This is a nice room. Bright. The winter sunlight off white snow is hot in here. Moist peat and potted plants make a smell like summer. Your mother calls it her greenhouse. Your father used to call it Jamaica – his tropical paradise.

  He lies in a cold place, now, in God’s Acres. They had to use a coffin-shaped metal dome burning gasoline for two days to thaw the ground where they dug. The dirt is freezing again above him. You stood through two different wakes and a long funeral. You shook lots of hands and hugged lots of backs, but didn’t even get to see him, what was left of him. It was a closed casket. He was there, but all you could see was the shiny box of puce-colored steel. Now, you can’t even see the box. It lies in a cold place. You’ve been to the brown rectangle of ground every day after school. Earlier today, you had lain down on it. Even now, black particles of earth cling to your jacket hanging by the back door. Mother will be home soon. You’ll be able to see her pull up the long drive just beyond the bank of windows. If you’re still here. It would be a real shame for her to see the red all over the glass. It would be a shame to ruin her greenhouse, your father’s Jamaica. In your right hand, you hold your father’s deer rifle, barrel pointed up toward your shoulder. In your left, you hold a religious tract you found in the Take-One bins at Sentry Foods. The rifle is loaded. So is the tract. Its lower edge is rumpled in your hands, sweaty with the January sun. You read:

  Why do bad things happen to good people?

  There is a one-word answer to that question: Sin. When the first humans sinned, they brought evil and death into the world. Since that time, sin is part of us. The Bible tells us, “There is no one righteous, not even one” ( Romans 3:10). Why do bad things happen to good people? Bad things do not happen to good people. No one is good. Sin is part of us. Evil is part of us. When bad things happen to us, we merely reap the harvest of our evil.

  Don’t believe it, Jacob. You father didn’t die because he was evil. He didn’t die because of something he had done or something you had done. He died because I failed. He died because God blinked. Don’t believe this tract. Small minds and smaller traditions. Don’t believe it.

  Can I keep bad things from happening to me?

  There is a one-word answer to that question, as well: No. God’s laws are immutable. Water does not flow uphill. The sun does not shine at night. Time does not run backward. Nor does sin lead to happiness. The Bible tells us, “The wages of sin is death” ( Romans 6:23). And because all of us are sinful, we cannot prevent bad things from happening. Our works cannot save us, for they are sinful and lead only to more evil.

  Your eyes are streaming tears now. You’ve positioned the gun barrel in your mouth. Don’t do it, Jacob. No. Keep reading. It gets better. Even in its perverse way, this tract holds forth something that might pass for hope. Keep reading, or better yet, throw the tract away. Your father’s death wasn’t about sin and evil. It wasn’t about deserving to die and being under God’s sentence of doom. And, no matter what happened to your father, your job, Jacob, is to live.

  I never knew that before. I, myself, never knew that fact until the night your father died, the night I ceased to be what I was and became something new. I had always thought that mortals were those creatures defined by their dying. But being human isn’t about dying. It is about living.

  Your finger tightens on the trigger.

  Don’t do it, Jacob. Don’t think of him burning on the hood of his truck. Think of him laughing in this room, his tropical paradise. Think of your mother, driving home even now. Think of your little sister, and your girlfriend, and your best friend. Think of all the living. You can’t do this. This breath can’t be your last. This bright space cannot be turned dark.

  Or, perhaps, it can.

  “Mother of God,” Donna said.

  She stood beside the microwave, watching a bag of popcorn rotate on the turntable. Small pops shook the bag as, kernel by kernel, the corn burst. Their little heads blew apart, and they became white snacks. Donna’s eyes shifted from the popcorn bag to the Burlington Gazette. Her thumb pinned down a Blake Gaines byline – CORONER RULES SUICIDE FOR TEEN.

  “Did you see this?”

  “See what?” asked Azra from the love seat.

  “The guy who hit my tree? His son – Jacob, sixteen years old – killed himself yesterday afternoon.”

  “Yes, I saw.”

  “Says he turned down counseling at the high school. Says his friends had seen him going to the cemetery every day after school. Says his mother came home from working at Sentry and found him. Can you imagine how horrible? A husband and a son, in two weeks?”

  “Horrible.” February was black and cold in the windows behind him. The popping corn had reached a frenzy, steam venting out the end of the bag. Donna pulled it gingerly from the microwave. “Why couldn’t he have said yes to counseling? Why couldn’t his friends have stayed with him? Why couldn’t his mom have taken time off work?” The steam scalded her wrist. “He shouldn’t have been alone.”

  Azra stared at the TV. It showed a black screen with small lines sparking atop it, the DVD paused just before the opening credits of a Great Performances production of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending.

  “He wasn’t alone.”

  “What?” Donna called from the kitchen.

  “You can’t stop a suicide.”

  She emerged from the kitchen and tore open the popped bag of corn. “What do you mean?”

  “Even if you could roll back time, could reassemble the kid’s head and plead with him not to do it, he would do it anyway. Even if you appeared before him, an angel of God, and ordered him to live, he would die anyway. A suicide wants death more than anything else in the world. You can’t dissuade that kind of desire.”

  “They have no idea,” Donna said, her voice growing bitter, “no idea what they’re doing to the people they love.”

  “Who?”

  “Suicides.” She paused. Her eyes grew gray with memory. “God, I would have done anything to save him.”

  “You didn’t even know him.”

  “I’m not talking about him,” Donna snapped. Then her tone softened. “I’m sorry. Just remembering my brother.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Azra said quietly. “Right. Kerry.”

  “Yeah. His name was Kerry.”

  “I’m sorry.” He drew a deep breath. “We don’t have to watch. If you need to talk–”

  “No.” She sniffed. “I just need some napkins. You can start the disc.”

  Azra pressed the Play button. The title appeared, glowing in the midst of the stark darkness. Orpheus De- scending. In parentheses beneath these words appeared Williams’s original title, (Battle of Angels). Donna returned from the kitchen, settled into the love seat next to Azra, and set the warm bag between them. She looked up in time to see the fading title sequence.

  “Do you believe in angels, Donna?” Azra asked.

  “Me?”

  “Do you believe in angels?”

  “Yes.” She considered between bites of popcorn. “Yes. I suppose I always have.”

  “Do you believe they can appear to humans – to us?”

  “Yes.”

  “And intervene on our behalf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why don’t they? Why don’t they intervene more often? Why don’t they save us? Why don’t they?”

  Munching on popcorn, she stared at Azra’s intensely angry eyes and said, “We have to live. They can’t step in whenever someone’s tire goes flat. We have to live.”

  “Yes. We have to live.”

  Light came up in a country mercantile store. Opening lines gave way to a surreal monologue. The speaker was a middle-aged gossip named Beulah, who told about a

  “poor old Wop” named Papa Romano who “sold liquor to the niggers.” A group of vigilantes paid him back by pouring coal oil over his vineyard and orchard, burning everything. Not a
fire truck came that night, and old Papa Romano tried to put out the fire himself but burned alive doing it.

  Donna shook her head. “People can be so cruel.”

  “God can be so cruel.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I just say it.”

  She leaned against him, her arm touching his from shoulder to wrist. “Let’s forget about that horrible night. Let’s just try to enjoy the movie. I wasn’t a Tennessee Williams fan before that night.”

  “Me neither.”

  “My brother liked the Road pictures and the Fred and Ginger movies. Light stuff. I don’t think he’d’ve much liked these plays.”

  A new figure had entered the mercantile, a lean drifter with a guitar. He was speaking to the owner of the place, the woman whose father had been burned up in the orchard years before. He spoke about a tiny bird with no legs that spent its whole life in the sky. He claimed to have seen one that had died and fallen to the ground, with a sky-colored body that was feather light and the size of a pinky. It even slept on the wind, simply spreading its wings and sleeping. It never touched ground until it died. “So’d I like to be one of those birds,” he said, “they’s lots of people would like to be one of those birds and never be… corrupted!”

  Donna turned to Azra. “I’d like to be one of those birds.”

  He seemed to deflate. “I used to be one of those birds.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. It’ll all be put right in a few weeks. It’ll all be right then.”

  She watched him, his small movements, and said, “Let’s just try to get back to the way things were, before the truck accident and all this. Let’s just try to get back to being happy.”

  He smiled sadly. “Yes. Let’s just try.”

  NINE

  Detective Leland was filling out a time-study form when the phone rang. She started at first, but then smiled tightly. Maybe it was Azra. The phone sounded again. It didn’t matter who or what it was. She was happy for anything to end the tedium.

  “This is Detective Leland.”

  “Samael will kill again tonight.” The man’s voice was utterly neutral in tone.

  Happy for almost anything to end the tedium. “What?”

  “Tonight in the old warehouse west of town, between Route 11 and the tracks beside the White River, 10:30 p.m.”

  “Who is this?”

  The click was almost soundless.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  The dial tone buzzed in her ear. She let the receiver slump away, her hand loose and clammy around the plastic. Her other hand lifted and quietly pressed the switch hook.

  Tonight. It hadn’t been the killer on the other end. The man had been too cogent, too precise. Besides, the killer had never wanted to gain attention. He was not the sort who was seeking publicity. Maybe it was a prank – except that the name Samael was known only to a handful of cops, the Feds, and the killer…

  And his accomplice.

  What if the call had come from the organized half of the crimes?

  Leland hit *69.

  The phone rang. It hadn’t sounded like a cell phone, and the station had caller ID set up for all the pay phones in Burlington. The phone rang. It had to be a landline, probably from somewhere nearby. The phone rang. The phone rang. The phone rang.

  Leland hung up. “Think! Think!”

  Serial killing teams were rare. Occasionally brothers or cousins would band together, gather up handcuffs, rope, and duct tape, and kill a handful of hitchhikers and prostitutes before they would get caught. Gacy said that some of his construction employees had aided with his crimes. It was likely, too, that his wives knew what he was doing. Then, there were the D.C. shooters, the ex-sniper Malvo and his young companion, like an evil Batman and Robin. But a disorganized killer working with an organized partner?

  She dialed again.

  “Hello, boss? Leland here. I’ve got an anonymous tip on our killer. Another slaying tonight at the old Badger Cigar warehouse by the river. Ten thirty. Yeah, I think it’s legit. That’s what my gut says. Yeah. How many squads can I have within three blocks? Yeah, that’s what I thought. A sharpshooter or ten would be nice, too. It’s a pretty big site to cover. I’ll call up to Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, see who they can spare. No, I’d like to brief everybody at seven tonight. I’ll give the details then. Yeah. I hope so, too. It’s time to get this guy. Thanks. Bye.”

  Again, her hand descended on the switch hook and held it a moment. It shook slightly as she lifted it. She dialed out, and punched in another number.

  “Hi, Blake Gaines, please.” Her heart pounded audibly in her chest. “Yes, hi, Blake. Detective Leland here. Yes, it’s full detective now, thanks. Remember when you took those crowd shots for me? No, they’ve not turned up anything yet, but a favor’s a favor. It’s payoff time. Yeah – not just big, but huge. No, only you. Come to the station tonight by six forty-five. Tell nobody else. I don’t give a damn about the desk editor. Yeah. It’s because you’re the best. Bring high-speed film and a tripod, no flash. If all this goes well, you’ll have a frontpage photo, and we’ll have evidence of a crime in the offing.

  “Oh, and if you tell anybody else or fuck this up in any other way, I’m cutting you loose and charging you with obstruction. Yeah, you’re welcome, too.”

  I see you, Keith McFarland. Good. Take the train to Woodstock. Yes, I will sit beside you. No one can see me, anyway.

  It is our last train ride together. Then we’ll hitch to Burlington. Some kind soul will take us as far as your warehouse. I’ll make sure he is supposed to die tonight, too, and make sure he is nice and juicy for you. He’ll take us to your warehouse, and your pistol will convince him to accompany us farther – all the way inside. That wet, window-riddled old place will be the perfect scene for your final kill.

  You will die tonight, in the very act. There will be a cop at every window of the building once we go in. A cop at every window, and one very important cop inside. She will shout to you, “Freeze! Police!”

  You will not freeze, of course. You’ve listened to no one but me these past fifteen years. You’ll finish the killing, and they will shoot you down, ninety bullets, one for each of your victims. Most will hit your chest, but enough will go through your head to rip it clean away. That’s fitting.

  And what of your hands? Oh, I have something really special planned for your hands. Leland couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She pressed her back against the brick wall and took a long, deep breath of the dank air inside the warehouse. There are five squads within three blocks, and twenty plainclothes men on the street outside. Four of them have sniper rifles under their coats. The Racine and Milwaukee sharpshooters are in place all along Route 11. You’ve even got a couple guys in canoes on the White River, for Christ’s sake. Canoeing at ten-thirty on a March evening – that’s not conspicuous. Still, Samael’s a disorganized psychotic. He’d kill in the station house if the mood struck.

  They’d already done a sweep of the old, crumbling warehouse. The owner had been more than willing to cooperate. They found nothing but rows of musty crates, nailed closed, padlocked closets, and a few intrepid rats. The perimeter had been up since eight o’clock, and anyone who crossed it would be called out by the spotters. As long as her earpiece was working, she’d know before the killer arrived.

  She, and Blake beside her. He stood so still in the darkness that she had almost forgotten about him. Only the wave of a hand before her face reminded her. She glanced up to see his wiry hair glowing greasily in a wedge of moonlight.

  He mouthed, “Anything, yet?”

  She shook her head.

  He nodded. He shifted the collapsed tripod from one hand to the other. Even Blake’s ego was an insufficient shield for the photographer tonight. The sweat on his brow looked like lizard scales in the moonlight. This would be a very cold place to hole up if one were a reptile. This killer was a reptile, a subhuman predator who had been protected by sly instinct – and
by whomever held his leash.

  “A car just turned the corner on Origen,” came a whispered voice over the radio. “Three men are getting out. Bunchy coat on the one. There’s a tall, thin guy with dark hair, a short guy with dark hair, and then the guy with the coat – blond, medium build. The coat guy goes first across the street, looks both ways. The short guy next, and now the tall one. I can’t see if any of them is packing. The coat guy is looking around, nervous. They’re heading for the east door.”

  “Got it,” she whispered into the mike. Then to Blake she said, “East door. Let’s go.”

  Blake quietly snapped the tripod to his side and followed her as she stalked out between the crates, across the damp floor.

  In the headphone, the commentary continued.

  “Looks like the short guy has a key. There must be a gun in the other pocket of his coat. The blond is saying something. It sounds like pleading.

  “Ah, the door is open. Still no gun visible. We could arrest now, but they might be legit–”

  “No. No evidence. Wait to see where they’re going, and then keep close.” Leland navigated a maze of rough-sawn crates and rusted piping. “Let’s see if we can separate them. We don’t know which one is the killer, and we don’t want to force his hand.”

  “The short one just shoved the blond guy inside and followed, the tall guy behind. Still no gun.”

  Leland slowed, hearing a voice ahead. She held out her hand, stopping Blake behind her and going into a crouch behind a set of steel barrels. Both held deadly still, ears straining in the cave-like air.

  “M-Move!” barked a man’s voice, the sound growing louder with approaching footsteps. “I-I-I’m j-just about d-done with you.”

  Leland whispered, “They’re moving toward us. They’re going fast, like they’re heading a little distance. Still no gun. Radio silence until I give the word.”